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The other day, I was thinking about the times I used to study Finance, and specifically about a course regarding Interest and how it represents the value of Time. What is the cost, or value, of one’s time? – is it high, resulting in a higher interest rate per period, or is it low, resulting in a low interest rate per period? How much time am I willing to spend working in order to get that new car? How much time do I have before that competitor will outrun me and snatch that market share from me?

This was how I started thinking about various out-of-the-box features (OOTB). Such features are often key in deciding whether to acquire a software/service/product because the one resource that we constantly complain about not having enough of is “time.”

You are now reading the first blog post on OOTB features in PCMCS covering one of the most used Reports for data analysis as well as troubleshooting profitability calculation results. At the end of this blog post, you should know what Balancing reports are, where to find them, how to use them, and also how to further expand them with minimal time and effort invested.

What are Rule Balancing Reports?

Rule Balancing reports provide quick insight into the validity of the application results. These reports are powerful OOTB artifacts that can be further configured to cater to any custom application requirements in order to support validation of calculation results as well as contribution analysis and traceability.

The PCMCS OOTB Rule balancing report is initially based on a Default Model View with a standard selection of upper level members for each dimension. Starting from this Default Model View, the administrators or users of the PCMCS applications can perform a deep dive analysis on more granular intersections and configure detailed reports for a ruleset or a group of rulesets they choose to investigate.

The Default Rule Balancing report is available as soon as the application has been deployed, and it can be accessed via the Main Navigator menu found under the Manage section.

I will be using the default BikesML30 application to demonstrate the capabilities of the Rule Balancing reports. If you have loaded your sample application and cannot see any results in the Rule Balancing reports, check that you ran your end-to-end calculations for any given POV from the Manage Calculation Menu. The POV I have chosen for this demonstration is FY16, January, Actual Scenario.

As you open the Rule Balancing menu, the Default Model View is the only view available when you initially set up your application and your allocation rules. Any other Rule Validation reports that you see within the Demo application besides the Default Model View have been built and configured outside of the out-of-the-box list of features.

What are PCMCS Model Views?

A Model View represents a predefined data slice within the PCMCS application; consider the model views as a set of selections of members for each dimension that displays only the relevant data points for a required intersection.

Rule Balancing Report Example

After running the entire set of allocation rules within the Demo BksML30 application, the Rule Balancing report should look like this:

The description of each rule selected will be displayed along with the rule number. The rules will be displayed in the order that they were launched following the user-defined sequencing, regardless of the actual Rule Number/Rule ID that has been assigned.

The “Input” column enables users to confirm that what was loaded into the application matches the expected values received from the source system.

The Allocation In and Allocation Out columns validate the allocations performed by the application from both a balance perspective (Allocation In should be equal and opposite to Allocation Out) and a numeric one. The balance aspect is particularly of interest when allocations are executed with custom calculation rules. In these cases, two separate rules are typically required, one for the “credit out” and one for the “debit in.” As such, there is a greater risk that the formulas for the outbound and inbound values will not produce amounts equal and opposite in total, thereby causing an undesired imbalance. In these situations, the Allocation In and Allocation Out values are shown on two separate rows, and they quickly illustrate to the user the success of their calculations.

Rule Balancing and Smart View Ad Hoc Reports

Any highlighted data point/data value in the Balancing screen will allow you to further investigate the allocation step through a Smart View ad hoc report. These hyperlinks represent pre-built/pre-defined queries that point directly to the Essbase database, allowing you to further expand the analysis of a selected data point.

When you click on the highlighted number, a Smart View link will be downloaded to your workstation.

As an example, you can see how the detail for Net Change looks like for the Custom calculation rule R0001 – Utilities Expense Adjustment in a Linked report in Smart View.

The column headers for the Rule Balancing report will list the relevant Balance dimension members. If there are members that are not populated, these will be automatically filtered out of the view. You can choose to display them by selecting View -> Columns and tagging the members you would like to display on your report – whether they have data or not.

You can view and edit the model view definition in the collapsed area between the POV and the Balancing report.

The Input data on this customized Model View is pertinent only to Operating Expenses rather than the entire pool of data. This is the reason that the total USD value may be different from data displayed on the Default Model View report.

You can perform ad hoc edits to the Model View as you are using it, but none of the newly made selections will be stored. If you want to apply permanent changes to a specific Model View selection, you will have to edit the Model View in the corresponding menu.

Your Model Views can be defined in the same order of operations as your allocations, or you can choose to create Model Views that are more detailed and dive deeper into a custom grouping of rules, regardless of the ruleset to which they might belong. The only dimensions displayed in your Model View selection are the Business dimensions. POV, Balance, Rule, and Attribute dimensions are not represented and therefore are not open for selection. The data points you define in the Model view will apply to all relevant rules IDs that generated the new cells.

Enhancing and Customizing Your Rule Balancing Reports

In the Demo BikesML30 application, there are several standard Rule Balancing reports that are split by Ruleset while others are named “Trace.” The Trace Model views are built in order to support point troubleshooting of allocation areas that are either complex or open to high variation during each run.

If you want to use the Rule Balancing report values outside of the ad hoc capacity, you can export the report into XLS, but remember that such an export will not represent a Smart View report – it will simply be a listing of the information presented on the Rule Balancing screen, as some members displayed here do not have a direct equivalent in the application (Running Remainder, Running Balance). This export option can be found in the Actions menu, export to Excel, or by selecting the button in the below screen capture.

A new workbook is downloaded called RuleBalance, and the entire set of data displayed on your screen will be available in XLS.

PCMCS Rule Balancing Drawbacks

Rule Balancing does not allow filtering based on Attributes, UDAs, or Names.

Rule Balancing hyperlinks open SmartView tabs called Linked View, and any new selections of links within the Rule Balancing report will overwrite the contents of the existing tab. If you start developing a report by using Rule Balancing, remember to always rename the tab in case you want to kick off another report for a secondary data point within the same workbook.

Common Issues When Using Rule Balancing Reports

“Rule Balancing Report Links Don’t Work”

Your workstation must have Smart View installed before using the hyperlink feature within PCMCS. The latest Smart View version is available for download through the Navigator main menu under the Installations section. For more guidance on generic EPM product patching, read the blog post Patch Today! Don’t Delay!

When selecting a hyperlink in the Rule Balancing report, you should be able to see that a download has started. As you click on the downloaded content, a new Excel tab will open, and you will be prompted to enter your Cloud credentials in order to have access to the requested data point intersections. If you do not have Excel open at the time you are accessing the downloaded content, the prompt to enter your Cloud credentials may not appear on the screen.

“I Can’t See Any Data in the PCMCS Rule Balancing Report.”

If data is not displayed on the screen, you are looking at one of the following situations:

There is no data loaded and/or calculated for the POV at the intersections you have defined in the Rule Balancing report. Check your job console to see if such tasks have been triggered and completed successfully.

Your security setup is restricting you from seeing any data values. Reach out to your administrator to adjust data grants or application access.

(This used to happen occasionally during on-premise implementations) If your Business dimensions are tagged as Label Only, check that the first child contains values. You may be able to see data at base level intersections within your application, yet the Rule Balancing report shows no vales due to the Dimension Type, Member Storage, or Aggregation operators you have defined in the metadata.

“I Can’t Create a PCMCS Model View.”

This restriction is based on provisioning. Reach out to your PCMCS Administrator for assistance with your profile or settings.

Rule Balancing Wrap Up

Rule Balancing reports are easy to set up and use. They retrieve data quickly, are accessible to all application users through the same menu, and they should be the first stop during a model run to quickly identify if there were any issues with data allocations.

Because Rule Balancing is a fast reporting tool with a predefined template OOTB, it is one of the commonly used troubleshooting reports for PCMCS, which can be leveraged for quick balance checks. It is also a mechanism for quick report building at detailed Rule level, a faster alternative to reading the Rule definition and manually replicating the intersections in a Smart View report. Because these reports are system generated and their hyperlinks are based on application and rules set-up, there is no room for manual errors when building validations.

Save precious time by leveraging the PCMCS OOTB functionality. In a subsequent blog post, I will talk about Intelligence screens (Analysis Views, Scatter Analysis, Profit curves, Traceability, and the setup of KPIs), so subscribe to our blog page to be kept in the loop. If you have further questions on the usage of Balancing Reports within PCMCS, please reach out to our team of PCMCS experts at infosolutions@alithya.com.

Even with a zero-based budgeting blueprint, many companies are still hesitant to go “all in” thinking that a zero-based budgeting program implementation requires too much time and resources. The introduction of Cloud services such as Oracle PBCS/EPBCS makes the implementation of a centralized financial system easier than ever, greatly reducing the barrier to entry.

This final post in this series shares the power of a PBCS/EPBCS environment to achieve the greatest success with a newly implemented zero-based budgeting program.

How Can PBCS/EPBCS Environments Enhance the ZBB Experience?

There are four key ways to gain the most from a PBCS or EPBCS environment, including the setup of targets and accountability metrics that offer more meaningful data and greater transparency when making budgeting decisions.

Clients are often given target settings goals in management meetings or over the phone, but we demonstrate for them how to integrate this into their budgeting systems. On numerous occasions, Alithya has been contracted to implement target settings where leadership sets growth targets and the systems flows down the revenue by service, product line, etc. In turn, analysts match the underlying details.

Not surprisingly, this is a common request because target setting has been a long-time tradition during the budget process. By setting up this target setting process in PBCS\EPBCS, an off-line process is instead online and is molded with the overall budgeting system process. Combining that with the zero-based budgeting mantra allows targets to be set and provides analysts with their needed baseline. Moreover, analysis can be done on departments that take the typical “reduce expenses by 10% approach” to archive the target number instead of the more insightful zero-based budget journey. Yes, target setting in a centralized system is easier, but the benefit of a centralized system is the ability to see how teams react to the new target. Did they take the traditional “reduce budget percentages to fit the numbers,” or did they look at their budget as a whole and analyze each line item and question the numbers organically?

After targets are set and the budget is approved, we look at the said cost saving come to fruition. A centralized system allows capital projects or initiatives to be tracked to help systematically measure the expenditures of cost savings activities found during the zero-based budget discovery. This provides a clear picture of what each department is doing and holds them more accountable for project decisions. It is an achievement to complete a zero-based budget “diet,” but holding teams accountable brings them to the next level of the zero-based budget “lifestyle.”

In essence, this new budgeting environment provides better insight into data – insight that ultimately allows savings to be found more effectively. For example, if you want to see the cost of direct materials, this centralized system can be set up to capture the costs in order to analyze and keep track of the different KPIs that reduce or increase overall costs.

Another example of how this works is by segmenting down employee costs such as travel. Instead of having a run rate of 10% of direct labor or travel costs, determine what job or tasks required that travel and use this KPI to negotiate travel expenses to further drive down costs. Essentially, use PBCS/EPBCS as a tool to capture KPIs (e.g. travel costs by job) and determine the best use of travel dollars and – more importantly – negotiate with vendors on key travel.

Lastly, a budgeting environment provides clarity to help teams make better informed decisions about future initiatives. With the ability to see all of the underlying data points in a single location, it is possible to identify past sales and marketing campaigns and expenditures that led to profitable customers. Therefore, zero-based budgeting teams that took the initiative to determine the best sales and marketing costs to benefit analysis from the ground up are able to dedicate more resources (e.g. dollars, people, etc.) to winning strategies. This is in contrast to the traditional budgeting approach of “10% rate of marketing spend year-of-year” that often masks the winning and more importantly losing marketing initiatives. Moreover, such planning and availability of different data points helps draw key inferences that allow sales and marketing teams to be more successful.

Summary

Utilizing a Cloud service such as Oracle PBCS/EPBCS makes it easier for companies to implement a centralized system and achieve success with a zero-based budgeting program. PBCS/EPBCS environments can and should be set up in a way that enhances the zero-based budgeting experience. This is achieved by integrating target setting goals and establishing accountability metrics that allow a deeper dive into budget data while providing greater transparency to make better informed decisions.

To learn more about zero-based budgeting best practices and to get professional help with your Oracle PBCS/EPBCS environments, feel free to contact our team of experts.

The first post in this 3-post series – Implementing Zero-Based Budgeting: Benefits, Myths, and Goals – covers the benefits of zero-based budgeting. To summarize, it enables you to achieve long-term savings that result in sustainable growth and holds your financial analysts accountable for the cost figures they approve and how they are managing the overall budget. This allows more effective recognition of any unwanted costs and how you that money can be shifted into other growth areas within the company.

However, to reap the benefits of a zero-based budgeting program, a culture change is needed first at certain levels within the company. The goal is to eventually have the entire company complete this culture shift, but it is best to start small. Along with a change in culture, a centralized reporting system needs to be created as well to provide teams the ability to share real-time numbers with each other to achieve the goals of this new budgeting program.

Better Than a Quick Fix

What exactly is meant by a culture change? This means starting small and fostering this culture change in other departments starting with Finance. To be successful with this new program, other departments will eventually have to jump on board with this new budgeting approach. These departments will need to step up in analyzing their own costs and how they can save more without diminishing their capabilities.

For example, while financial analysts talk to the shop floor to see where costs can be reduced, the HR department should work with Finance to determine how it can become leaner. Moreover, the IT department should take the lead on negotiating with its vendors to find any areas that can be saved. These are just a few examples of how different departments can step up to the plate; implementing a successful zero-based budgeting program will requires team effort.

Changing the culture doesn’t happen overnight. Senior leaders should take the lead in fostering this change. To ensure that everyone is on the same page, managers need advocate the new approach within their respective departments.

Incentives also help teams to buy into this new budgeting approach. Although incentives for growth metrics may already exist, additional incentives can effectively encourage staff to find ways to reduce costs for the metrics they manage.

Some examples of incentive metrics are the realized ROI based on the requested capital expenditure and the total cost saving dollars resulting from a zero-based budgeting program. For the former, this can mean moving to the Cloud to save money or reducing redundant tasks by introducing centralized software. For the latter, it can be exemplified by achieving a 10% cost reduction per phone.

Best Practice to Achieve Success

A crucial component of the success of a zero-based budgeting program is an officer who governs the entire process from start to finish. This individual (or team) should contain deep knowledge of the budgeting process. Naturally, s/he will not know the ins and outs of each department, so that is why s/he needs to be an ambassador to department leaders. The officer will also provide oversight to ensure that past bad habits of budgeting do not return to plague this new program. And lastly, s/he must be dedicated to the craft of continuous improvement which means seeking outside counsel when needed.

As mentioned earlier in the post, a culture change needs to be accompanied by a centralized reporting system. Alithya has helped clients implement Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) and Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (EPBCS) and overcome the deficiencies of Excel-based models. These models lose sight of what the true cost numbers are because past budgets are simple anchors of history rather than detailed breakdowns of cost. Moreover, these numbers become siloed within the vast library of Excel models. With Oracle PBCS or EPBCS, budgets can be highly surgical and help leaders in the company pinpoint reductions.

A centralized system allows the capture of all changes in a single location in real-time, and it provides insight into how effectively managers seek cost savings. This can be used as a key indicator to determine if their actions are in line with this new methodology.

Furthermore, centralization not only holds managers more accountable, but it also empowers them to create innovative cost-saving solutions. Driven by incentives, staff will burn with a clear purpose to find new ways to achieve sustainable growth for the company and be rewarded for hard work.

Recapping What It Takes to Achieve ZBB Success

The goal is to create a cost savings culture that allows more capital to be invested into growing parts of the company. To be successful, follow the best practices outlined, starting with a culture change within the company and giving your teams a centralized PBCS and EPBCS system to more clearly see all data points. The hard work does not stop here, though! The next post delves into setting up a zero-based budgeting system.

If you are in the finance world, then you probably have heard of zero-based budgeting. Investopedia defines zero-based budgeting as “a method of budgeting in which all expenses must be justified for each new period. The process…starts from a “zero base,” and every function within an organization is analyzed for its needs and costs.”

There are many reasons that financial professionals decide to use zero-based budgeting. For one thing, it goes hand-in-hand with a centralized system where information can be shared – something at which Excel spreadsheets are terrible. Furthermore, developing a centralized system enables you to scale to your needs as your company grows. Lastly, it enables financial analysts to spend more of their work week analyzing data instead of curating a financial system and worrying if the numbers match.

At Alithya, we have found with our past clients that a successful zero-based budgeting implementation resolves numerous problems. The two main things clients hope to achieve is growth across multiple business units and developing sustained cost reduction. With zero-based budgeting, you can earn long-term savings that can directly translate into sustainable growth.

Earning Long-Term Cost Savings

Zero-based budgeting becomes a daily exercise in cost savings for your financial teams. One method in achieving cost savings is renegotiating costs. For example, instead of taking the run-rate of 3% from last year’s numbers, perhaps you can contact your vendors to bargain for a better deal or switch to a different vendor with a more competitive price. Or how about having your analysts ask the IT department why it costs $38.03 per phone? What makes up that entire $38.08? Don’t assume that there aren’t any negotiable components of a cost.

The reason zero-based budgeting is so effective at long-term savings is that it is not a one-off fix. Many teams tend to implement one-off fixes, and then find that those fixes do not provide sustainable cost savings. A common example is offshoring your call center which might get you an immediate win in the cost column. However, this strategy typically reduces customer service quality while also limiting your ability to evolve with your business as it grows.

When enacting this type of program, you will analyze the costs of your business at every level. This may seem tedious, but what you will find is a clearer understanding of where your money is going. This can mean acquiring a greater understanding of contract labor costs as well as improving purchasing and procurement procedures, just to name a few. Moreover, when properly implemented, zero-based budgeting can reduce SG&A costs by 10 to 25 percent, often within as little as six months,” according to McKinsey & Company.

Debunking Myths Surrounding Zero-Based Budgeting

There are many myths surrounding zero-based budgeting that have sadly created an artificial barrier that CFOs and their teams do not want to cross. Many financial professionals think that it means cutting the budget down to the bare bones, but rather, a zero-based budgeting program analyzes costs from the top-down. Moreover, it is the CFOs’ duty to outline cost-cut targets so that their team’s efforts are focused.

Another misconception is that zero-based budgeting only helps with cutting the costs of SG&A. Actually, it can do much more, such as breaking down the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and help teams make investment choices on the capital expenditure with the greatest ROI.

Just because your business is not in decline or stagnating doesn’t mean that you can’t adopt a zero-based budgeting program. If you are already achieving growth, you can use this type of budgeting method to keep the overall business leaner so that you can provide more runway for growing business units.

Do you really start from zero? This is a common question that we are asked, and many people think because of its name that you do always start from zero. Technically, this is true, but this is the core component that drives the cost management culture change that will be introduced in the next post in this series.

However, not all things have to start from zero. At Alithya, we have been through many implementations where parts of the P&L are driver-based or zero-based. This can be achieved with a detailed, structured, and interactive system (like Oracle PBCS/EPBCS) that gives you real-time feedback.

How Does Oracle PBCS and EPBCS Help Achieve ZBB goals?

The main feature you acquire when you implement an Oracle PBCS or EPBCS system with your zero-based budgeting program is deeper analytics. This data enables you to dig into the “why and how” of your P&L.

For example, you could pose the question what driver did they use? Did they just simply take last year’s actuals and add 3%? Did they take a cost-per-head and budget it manually, or did they take the easy way out? All are important questions that force finance teams to be more accountable when it comes to everyday decisions.

Recapping the Benefits of ZBB

By implementing a zero-based budgeting program with a centralized system, you can hold your analysts more accountable to cost figures while making them own up to how the costs are managed. It allows you to recognize any unwanted costs that can be diverted into certain growth areas as well as breed a culture of cost reduction and visibility. The latter requires that you to start a culture change within your team. It is an essential part of having success with a zero-based budgeting program which is why we will cover it in greater detail in the next post.

Oracle’s Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Service (PCMCS) provides a powerful service for allocating General Ledger profits and costs. Recently, we worked with a banking industry client to provide a model that calculates profitability at a Product/Channel level while maintaining Account level detail. We accomplished this through a framework we refer to as Micro-Costing where detailed profits and costs are calculated in a database using rates developed at the summary level in PCMCS. Alithya began development of this framework in 2016 to meet a functional gap in PCMCS and provide a common framework that can be used either on-premise or in the Cloud.

To highlight the capabilities of Micro-Costing, I will use the solution deployed at our banking client as a specific example. The following table describes the two layers where profits and costs are provided:

Definitions:

Product – a loan or deposit offering. Examples of a loan are an auto loan or credit card; examples of a deposit are a savings account or a checking account.

Origination Channel – where the account was originated.

Service Channel – where the financial or transactional cost or profit is occurring or assigned to.

Customer – a legal entity responsible for accounts; for example, a person with both a home loan and a savings account.

Customer Account – a product that is assigned to a customer.

Financial Costs and Profits – the cost or profit of servicing a loan or deposit for a customer; for example, interest paid on a savings account.

Transactional Costs and Profits – the cost or profit of interacting with a customer; for example, the cost of an ATM transaction.

A simple way of thinking about the client’s business model:

Origination channels offer Products

Products are assigned to Customers as Customer Accounts

Customer Accounts are used by Customers through Service Channels

The generation of an Account level profit or cost is a C = A*B calculation where

WAREHOUSE-STAR – Persists the drivers, the rates, and the calculated profits and costs at the Customer Account level. The Driver Lookup and Driven Value Lookup functions are used to define the drivers and driven values so that the addition of a driver or driven value is a configuration activity for an administrator rather than a coding activity.

Data Integration

A high-level summary of the data flows as deployed:

The source data is broken down into 3 types:

General Ledger

Operational Data

Metadata

Data Integration uses interim flat files to maintain flexibility regarding the source data by establishing an API via the flat files without requiring knowledge of the source systems. This allows for the introduction of source data that comes from 3rd parties not available for automated extraction from the source.

The operational data includes both Customer Account financial information and transactional activities or fees. Product and Channel references are provided along with this information:

1 million+ Customer Accounts

Approximately 6 million transactions per month

Some transactional drivers represent an activity that cannot be associated with a specific Customer Account; for example, a new loan application. Proxy Customer Accounts for each product are generated to provide a place for these activities.

Additionally, although not graphically displayed in the above diagram, Branch level drivers are directly fed into the PCM Model, examples of which are Branch square footage and number of branch employees. These drivers were used for non-Customer Account PCM costs and profits.

All Batch processing is built using SQL Server Integration Services. This is based upon an agreement with the client regarding the preferred tool sets with the database selected being SQL Server. Framework is transferable to other integration tools and databases including Hadoop framework, and in-house solutioning by Alithya was performed in preparation for use of the Micro-Costing framework with larger clients.

The data integration is as follows:

Set POV

Update metadata and stage

Stage financial and transactional information

Validate staged data and reprocess as necessary

Load staged data to ODS and then to Star

Upload PCMCS with GL and drivers

Process allocations in PCMCS

Download rates

Run A*B calculations for each Customer Account and populate profit and cost table

Key Design Principles

The following design principles were focused on during development of the Micro-Costing framework. These principles facilitate an easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain solution as deployed for our client.

Dimensional synchronization between the Micro-Costing warehouse and PCM

Validation checks as close to the original data as possible

Configurable drivers and driven values

Dimensional Synchronization

All dimensional mapping must occur prior to the warehouse star schema. It is not possible to perform the Micro-Costing A*B calculations to derive profits and costs detail otherwise. This has an impact on any deployment that uses FDMEE or Cloud Data Manager as they cannot perform additional mappings during upload to the cube.

Dimensional Synchronization includes a Point of View: Year, Period, Scenario, and Version to allow for loading multiple sets of drivers during a month, and for transfer of ‘what-if’ rates back to the Customer Account level, if desired.

Validation Checks

Validation kick-outs and checks occur as early in the data integration process as possible, with a “simple” validation during staging and a “complex” validation during generation of the fact information in the warehouse. This allows the administrator to catch quality issues with a minimum amount of overall process duration occurring. The data integration process is broken into a series of steps that allows for validation review and then re-running a step prior to moving on to the next step. This principle held up in deployment, ensuring that time wasn’t wasted running later processes with invalid data, the result being an improved overall process and a significant reduction in the number of days required to produce profit and cost analysis for a given month. A lesson learned during the initial roll-out was that our client had not previously required a rigorous validation of the drivers at the Customer Account level and had to develop new techniques for validating the source information to ensure accuracy.

Configurable Driver and Driven Values

A key feature of Oracle’s PCM applications is configurability, and the Micro-Costing framework is built to provide an easy-to-maintain solution that allows for rapid addition of drivers and driven values without the administrator having to manually update the tables and views required to manage the transformation and persistence of data. This was accomplished by defining the drivers and driven values in tables and providing stored procedures for maintaining the tables and views.

The process for adding a new driver and driven value is very straightforward:

Backup the database and the PCM cube.

Update the source feeds to include the new activity or fee.

Update the activity to Driver Lookup and Driven Value Lookup tables with the new values. *Note: The driven value record references the driver for the A*B calculation.

Execute the “Update Costing Tables and Views” stored procedure. *Note: removing a driver or driven value does not modify the tables.

Update HPCM Account dimension for the new driver and driven value.

Update HPCM rules to use the new driver and allocate expenses to the new driven value, and calculate the rate for the new driven value.

Run the entire data integration process for the POV, and review results.

Key Benefits

The successful deployment of the solution provides the following key business benefits:

An improved ability to provide Product/Channel level costs and profits.

Reduced monthly cycle time and effort. The prior data integration process was disjointed and required a large amount of effort to produce results.

Aggregation along other dimensional paths. Starting at the Customer Account level allows for aggregation along Customer attributes such as zip-code or credit score, providing new insights and enhanced executive decision making. A follow-on project to use the Customer Account level data in OAC is currently being assessed.

Additionally, the following benefits to the administrative team are realized:

Model flexibility. The configuration of an additional driver and driven value in Micro-Costing takes fewer than 15 minutes.

Operational Data Store (ODS) and Warehouse. This allows for future projects to use a common curated source of information. This was a pot sweetener for our client who was dissatisfied with its prior warehouse, but needed a business reason to refresh. The prior warehouse lacked the following items that were addressed in the new ODS and warehouse:

Explicit mappings such as Activity Code to Driver Code that are controlled by the business

Easy troubleshooting, validation, and auditing capabilities with PCM. Errors or mismatches in profit or cost at the Product/Channel level can be reduced to either rule definition mistakes or driver data entry mistakes. Finding out where the issue is and correcting it with a few clicks has a positive impact on the overall analysis and maintenance effort.

Final Thoughts

Alithya has developed a Micro-Costing framework that allows an integrated view of profits and costs at both a summary and detailed level. This framework is successfully deployed at a banking industry client to provide a superior solution.

Framework is deployable either on-premise or in the Cloud and is available for other industries such as:

Patient encounters in Healthcare

Claims in Insurance

SKUs in Retail

Subcomponents in Manufacturing

…or anywhere the allocations occur at a summary level with drivers aggregated from a detail level.

While nobody likes submitting Service Requests (SR) on the Oracle support site, this is a necessary task that we must get comfortable with, whether our applications are on-premise or in the Cloud. After 12 years of consulting, I can say that I have seen or pursued many wrong ways of submitting an SR which, in turn, yields results along similar lines – a lot of back-and-forth emailing with Oracle’s support staff, personal frustration, misinformation, and most importantly – time wasted on all sides.

Worry no more! Here is a list of things you can do to avoid further pain and frustration when submitting Service Requests or Enhancement Requests with Oracle for Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Service (PCMCS).

Where do I start when submitting SRs and ERs for PCMCS?

You can still use the generic Oracle Support website to open either an SR or an Enhancement Request (ER) with Oracle for Cloud applications, but the right way to do this is to first gain access to the Oracle Cloud Support website which looks slightly different and has a couple of new fields to complete. The email associated with the Oracle account should be the same email that has access to specific Cloud subscriptions.

Standard Oracle Support website

Cloud Support website

Provide feedback

Login in to the Cloud application for which you want to create the SR or ER, and once you are logged in to PCMCS, navigate to your user name (top right) and select “Provide Feedback.” A new screen will appear enabling you to highlight the area of concern to provide context for the reason you are submitting the SR or ER.

Provide details around the area of concern. This gives context to the issue at hand and creates a reference for future troubleshooting. For example, if the issue is related to one specific Rule, ensure that the last screen open before you click on Provide Feedback is on the rule itself, or open to the job library listing the execution of the rule. You will only be able to highlight areas on the last screen open before launching the “Provide Feedback” screen. The details you provide here will not automatically be copied into your SR. If you want to describe the issue in detail within this section, you can copy the same text within the SR itself – save it locally before submitting the feedback.

Options for your feedback.

After you submit your feedback, a new panel will come up and will contain the following 3 sections:

Environment: a listing of your Browser, Platform, Version, Locale, Resolution, Time zone, Cookies enabled (Y/N), URL of the instance, and the User Agent. You do not have to fill in anything in this section. All information is filled in for you.

Plugins: a listing of enabled plugins, if any. You do not have to fill in anything in this section. All information is filled in for you.

Confirm Application snapshot submission: this is the only section where you must provide input.

You have a choice of Yes / No – depending on how comfortable you feel about Oracle using your daily maintenance snapshot for regression testing in upcoming releases. Giving Oracle access to your maintenance snapshots means you are agreeing to them using the model and any related data for their testing going forward. If your hierarchy structures and data are not sensitive, then you may choose to select “Yes.” My personal preference is to select “No” and provide the static/current moment in time archived snapshot within the SR . When the SR is closed, the contents of said snapshot will be archived and not used for further regression testing.

Generate a Diagnostic Report (UDR) ID

When clicking the “Submit” button on this screen, a unique alphanumeric reference is generated. This reference will be required when submitting an SR or ER on the Oracle Cloud Support website. Write down or, preferably, copy and save this UDR string of characters on your workstation in a txt file.

Log in to the Oracle Cloud Support website and proceed with opening a new Cloud SR/ER.

Select the “Create Service Request” button on the lower left-hand side of your screen.

Select “Service Type” from the drop-down list of available Cloud services to which your user has access.

Once you have selected “Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Service,” a listing of all available instances will be displayed in the new “Service Name” section:

Make sure you select the appropriate “Service Name” with the instance where you generated the related UDR (see previous steps).

Add “Problem Type” and select based on the type closest to your issue:

The above choices will not trigger related content or a list of options – this is merely to ensure that the ticket goes to the appropriate team during the investigation process.

In the “Problem Summary” section, reference the Cloud product for which you are creating the SR or ER. This will be the subject of your ticket, and it will help administer and keep track of multiple tickets at the same time.

Attach all System Reports available for your PCMCS app.

To avoid multiple back and forth email exchanges with the Oracle Support staff, provide them with all the available information. Here is a current list of all available reports for troubleshooting PCMCS applications.

Execution statistics for the last model / allocation execution connected to the SR – if SR is related to calc performance, calc troubleshooting or rule setup. (PDF or XLS format preferable)

Program Documentation (with details; not with aliases) (XLS or PDF format preferable)

Dimension Statistics (PDF format preferable)

POV Statistics (PDF or XLS format preferable)

All these reports can be generated from PCMCS – Navigator menu – System reports.

Attach the Diagnostic report

From the “Navigator” Menu, select “Application,” click on the drop-down in “Actions” and select “Export Supplemental Diagnostics.” This report is very useful to the development team troubleshooting your issue.

When selecting this report, a new job will be launched that can take anywhere between a couple of minutes to 20+ minutes, depending on the size of your application and the amount of logging involved.

An archive of the diagnostics reports will be generated in the File Explorer within the Application menu. Some of the reports in this archive will be a repeat of the other reports mentioned in the previous step, but if you provide all this information simultaneously, the redundancy should not cause any issues. If you are not open to launching such process in your environment during business hours, and yet you still want to submit the SR in a timely fashion, you can skip this step and provide this report only upon request from Oracle Support staff.

Error description

If you can replicate the error, capture each step via screenshots and save them in a Word doc. The earlier the support staff understands what you are dealing with, the faster the entire troubleshooting process will be completed.

Refer to menu options precisely as what they are called within PCMCS.

For example, to submit an SR or ER related to the Calculation Rules menu, refer to it as Calculation Rules – Rules Express Editing, as both names appear in the PCMCS menu.

Establish the SR level appropriately.

There are 4 options to choose from, and you should choose based on urgency as well as level of importance.

Choose severity 1 and 2 only when applicable. You may be inclined to select such severity options so that your issue is resolved quickly, but use your own criteria to distinguish between something that is really a show stopper and something that is not. Time is of the essence for both you and the Oracle Development team.

When choosing severity 1, you will open your calendar for potential phone calls that can occur at any time, regardless of your time zone.

My request is really an ER, not an SR.

If your SR is an Enhancement Request, provide a lot of supporting detail in the “Business Justification” section. Not doing so will delay the Enhancement Request submission by up to 2 weeks. If further business justification is requested, respond promptly to make things move along and ensure that your request makes it to the next patch release sooner rather than later.

Once an Enhancement Request is recorded, your SR will be updated with the ER ID (which will differ from the SR ID originally assigned the moment you submitted the ticket). The original SR will be closed, and you can open a new SR quoting the ER ID 48 hours after the moment your request was accepted. The Support staff will confirm whether the ER will make it in the next monthly patch release.

Bedside manners for SR/ER submitters.

Try to reduce the number of communications within the SR. Taking the above steps will get you closer to achieving a near-perfect SR submission. Be mindful about how to communicate efficiently. The higher the amount of back-and-forth communication, the more difficult it will be for the development team to follow the conversation trail and ensure efficient troubleshooting.

Whether you are a service provider or a PCMCS administrator who inherited an application at the end of a project implementation, we all tap the same Oracle Support resources which are, as are most things, finite. The more efficient your SR/ER submission is, the faster these resources provide a response with accurate and detailed troubleshooting steps. For any time-sensitive issues or further escalation, leverage your Oracle representative and your implementation partner. Their existing relationship with Oracle Product Management will help direct your query to the right resources and ensure your SR is not stuck because of lack of clarity regarding which team should own it. This will ensure that your SR/ER is fast-tracked to the appropriate team and given the right level of attention. For any critical issues you encounter with PCMCS or other Cloud subscriptions where there is no solution in sight, reach out to Alithya at infosolutions@alithya.com so that our team can provide a fast end effective assessment.

Over the last year, we have been fielding, positioning, and aligning more with Oracle’s new Cloud products. Some of the most common questions we are asked are:

Has Edgewater Ranzal done that before?

What “gotchas” have you encountered in your implementations and how have you addressed them?

What unique offerings do you bring?

These are all smart questions to ask your implementation partner because the answers provide insight into their relevant experience.

Has Edgewater Ranzal done that before?

Edgewater Ranzal is an Oracle PCMCS thought leader and collaborates with Oracle as a Platinum partner to enhance PCMCS with continued development. To date, we’ve completed nearly 20 PCMCS (Cloud) implementations, and almost 80 Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM – on premise) implementations spanning multiple continents, time zones, and industries. Our clients gladly provide references for us which is a testament to our success and abilities. Additionally, we frequently have repeat clients and team up with numerous clients to present at various conferences to share their successes.

As a thought leader in the industry and for PCMCS, we sponsor multiple initiatives that deliver implementation accelerators, test the latest product enhancements prior to their release, and work in tandem with Oracle to enhance the capabilities of PCMCS.

Now let’s explore some of the data integration challenges one might unexpectedly encounter and the intellectual property (IP) Ranzal offers to mitigate these and other data integration challenges that lurk.

What gotchas have you encountered in your implementations and how do you mitigate them?

We could go into great depth when detailing the PROs for using FDMEE with PCMCS…but it is much more beneficial to instead share some of the other less obvious discoveries made. Note that we work directly and continuously with Oracle to improve the product offering.

Extracting data via FDMEE data-sync is challenging. The size of the data cube and configuration settings of PCMCS has a threshold limit – 5,000,000 records and a 1GB file size – both of which are quite often reached. As a result, we have developed a custom solution for the data-sync routine.

Large datasets directly into PCMCS via DM (Cloud-based Data Management) can exhibit performance problems due to the server resources available in the Cloud. Functionality in on-premise FDMEE (scripting, Group-By, etc.) helps reduce the number of records going into the Cloud and therefore provides a performance gain.

Patching to the latest FDMEE patch set is crucial. Cloud applications (PCMCS, FCCS, E/PBCS) update monthly. As a result, we need to consistently check/monitor for FDMEE patches. These patches help ensure that canned integrations from Oracle are top-notch.

Executing two or more jobs concurrently via EPMAutomate is quite troublesome due to the workflows needed and how EPMAutomate is designed. As a result, we have invested considerable time into cURL and RESTful routines. We discovered that the login/logout commands are tied to the machine, not the user-process, so any logout from another executing run logs out all sessions.

The use of EPMAutomate is sometimes difficult. It requires a toolset on a PC – “JumpBox” – or on-premise EPM servers. It also requires the use of .BAT files or other scripted means. By using FDMEE, the natural ease of the GUI improves the end-user experience.

Loading data in parallel via FDMEE or DM can cause Essbase Load Rule contention due to how the automatic Essbase load rules are generated by the system. Oracle has made every effort to resolve this before the next Cloud release. Stay tuned… this may be resolved in the next maintenance cycle of PCMCS (18.10) and then the on-premise update of patch-set update 230.

We all know that folks (mainly consultants) are always looking to work around issues encountered and come up with creative ways to build/deliver new software solutions. But the real question that needs to be asked is: Should we? Since FDMEE has most of the solutions already packaged up, that would be the best tool for the job. The value that FDMEE can bring is scores better than any home-grown solution.

What unique offerings do you bring?

At Edgewater Ranzal, we have started to take some of our on-premise framework and adopt it for PCMCS. Some of the key benefits and highlights we provide are:

To combat the complications with loading data via FDMEE because of FDMEE’s inability to execute PCMCS clears out-of-the-box, we have added the functionality into the Ranzal IP catalog and can deploy this consistently for our clients. This is done via the RESTful functionality of PCMCS. Some of the items we have developed using REST are:

Import/export mappings

Execute data load rules or batch jobs from 3rd party schedulers

Refresh metadata in the Cloud

Augment EPMAutomate for enhanced flexibility

Execute business rules/clear POV commands as part of the FDMEE workflow

Execute stored procedures (PL/SQL) against DBaaS (see below)

Enhanced validation framework (see below)

We have redeveloped our Essbase Enhanced Validate to function with the PCMCS Cloud application. FDMEE on-premise can now validate all the mapped data prior to loading. This is great for making sure data is accurate before loading.

The Edgewater Ranzal tool-kip for FDMEE includes the ability to connect to other Cloud offerings for data movements, including DBaaS and OAC.

Can FDMEE do that…and should FDMEE do that?

Yes, you should use FDMEE to load to PCMCS, and it is an out-of-the-box functionality! As you can see, unlike DM whose feature comparison to FDMEE will be discussed in a later blog and white-paper, there are a lot of added benefits. The current release of FDMEE v11.1.2.4.220 provides product functionality enhancements and has greater stability for integrations with most Cloud products. Suffice it to say, having python scripting available and server-side processing for large files will greatly enhance your performance experience.

Contact us at info@ranzal.com with questions about this product or its capabilities.

What is Oracle Profitability and Cost Management?

Organizations with world class finance operations generally can close in a minimal number of days (2-3 in an ideal organization) and have frequent and efficient budget and forecast cycles while also visiting different ‘what if’ scenario analysis along the way. These organizations often deliver in-depth profitability and cost management analysis reports at fund, project, product, and/or customer level, completing the picture of an accurate close cycle.

Oracle offers packaged options in support of all these finance processes, but the focus of this post will be Profitability and Cost Management (PCM).

One of the most painful and time-consuming processes for any business entity is PCM analysis. The reasons why cost allocations processes are time consuming are too many to count – from model complexity to data granularity, driver metric availability, rigidity of allocation rules, delays with implementing allocation changes, and almost impossible-to-justify results. Instead of focusing on the negative aspect, let’s focus on what can be done to alleviate such pain and energize the cost accounting department by giving it access to meaningful and accurate data and empowering users through flexibility to perform virtually unlimited “what if” analysis.

The PCM Journey

The initial Profitability and Cost Management product, like almost all Oracle EPM offerings, was released on-premise in July 2008 and is known as Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM). 10 years later, HPCM continues to deliver an easier way to design, maintain, and enhance allocation processes with little to no IT involvement as it has since it was initially launched, but with a greater focus on flexibility and transparency. The intent for HPCM was to be a user-driven application where finance teams would be involved beginning with the definition of the methodology all the way to the steps needed to execute day-to-day processing. Any cost or revenue allocation methodology is supported via HPCM while graphical traceability and allocation balancing reports support any query from top-level analysis all the way down to the most granular detail available in the application.

There are 3 HPCM modules available on-premise today. Each was designed and developed for a different type of allocation methodology or complexity need:

Simple allocations – Detailed Profitability (a.k.a. single-step allocations. Example: From Accounts and Departments, allocate data to same Accounts, new target Departments, and to granular Products/SKU based on driver metric data. This module allows for a very high degree of granularity with dimensions >100k members, but it does not cater to complex driver calculations or to allocations requiring more than 1 stage).

Average to high complexity allocations – Standard Profitability (a.k.a. multi-step allocations of up to 9 iterations/stages, allowing for reciprocal allocations. Example: Allocations from accounts and departments to channels, funds, and other departments. Allocation of results from previous steps are redistributed onto Products, Customers etc. Driver metric complexity is achievable with this module; custom generated drivers are available as well, but there are limitations regarding driver data granularity, granularity of allocated data, and overall hierarchy sizing).

High complexity allocations – Management Ledger (unlimited number of steps, high number of complex drivers, custom driver calculations, custom allocations, more granularity, and increased flexibility in terms of defining and expanding allocation methodology). This is the last module added to the HPCM family and the only one available as SaaS Cloud Offering.

The Cloud is Your Oyster

In 2016, Oracle introduced the Cloud version of HPCM: Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Service (PCMCS). PCMCS is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, and as with many of Oracle’s Cloud offerings, PCMCS includes key improvements that are not available in the on-premise version, and enhancements are made at a much faster pace.

There is currently no indication that the two HPCM modules – Detailed and Standard Profitability – will make their way to the Cloud, since increased allocation complexity as well as increased hierarchy sizing supported by the Management Ledger module caters to most, if not all, potential requirements.

The Management Ledger module included with the PCMCS SaaS subscription has a core strength in the ease of use and flexibility to change, enabling finance users to define and update allocation rules and methodologies via a point-and-click interface. While the initial setup is advisable to be performed with support from an experienced service provider, the maintenance and expansion of PCMCS (Management Ledger) models can be achieved by leveraging solely functional resources, in most cases. “What-if” scenario creation and analysis has never been easier. Users not only can copy data and allocation methodologies between scenarios, but they can also update the data sets and allocation steps independently from a standard scenario, generating as many simulation models as they need, gaining increased insight into decision making.

Standard Profitability models perform allocations in Block Storage Databases (BSO). While BSO applications are great for complex calculations and reciprocal allocation methodologies, they have the disadvantage of being limited in terms of structure or hierarchy sizing. This hierarchy restriction is not as pressing in Aggregate Storage Option (ASO) type applications, which is the technology used by Management Ledger. The design considerations for a Standard Profitability model are also significantly more rigid when compared with the Management Ledger module, which has no limitations regarding allocation stages, allocation sequencing, or a maximum number of dimensions per each allocation step.

Detailed Profitability models heavily leverage a database repository while any connected Essbase applications are used solely for reporting purposes. Initial setup and future changes, outside of the realm of simply adding new hierarchy members, will require specialized database management skills, and the usage of a single step allocation model is not as pervasive. Complex allocation methodologies may require the usage of Detailed Profitability models in conjunction with Management Ledger, but these situations represent the exception rather than the rule.

Why Should You Choose Oracle Profitability and Cost Management?

One of the key strengths for HPCM, available since it was released, and now included in PCMCS, is transparency – the ability to identify and explain any value resulting from the allocation process, with minimal effort. Each allocation rule or allocation step is uniquely identified, enabling users to easily navigate via the embedded/out-of-the-box balancing report to the desired member intersection opened through a point and click action in Excel (using Smart View) for further analysis and investigation. The out-of-the-box-program documentation reports identify the setup of each rule and can be leveraged for quick search by account, department, segment code, or any other dimension available in the application. The execution statistics reports delivered as part of the PCMCS offering enable users to quickly understand which allocation process is taking longer than expected and identify opportunities for overall process improvement or to simply monitor performance over time. These two out-of-the-box reports – execution statistics and program documentation – are the most heavily used reports during application development, troubleshooting, and particularly when new methodologies are developed. Users can quickly search through these documents, leverage them to keep track of methodology changes, and use them as documentation for training new team members.

Performing mass updates to existing allocation rules has never been faster. PCMCS contains a menu that allows end users to find and replace specific member name references in their allocations for each individual data slice, allocation step, or an entire scenario. A quick turnaround of such maintenance tasks results in an increased number of iterations through different data sets, giving the cost accounting team more time to perform in-depth analysis rather than waiting for system updates.

PCMCS-embedded analytics and dashboarding functionality is also a significant differentiator, enabling end users to create and share dashboards with the rest of the application users through the common web interface and without the need for IT support. Reports created in PCMCS are available immediately and without time consuming initial setup or migrations between environments followed by further security setup tasks.

A comparison of On-Prem vs Cloud will be available in a future post, so please subscribe below to receive notifications for PCMCS-related blog updates.

Within an organization, technology is mission-critical to most business strategies, and IT costs represent a significant portion of back office spend.

Among their many responsibilities, the CFO and the CIO must make sure that:

Technology spending is aligned with business strategy

Business applications and end-user services are delivered efficiently and cost-effectively

Coherent project portfolios that grow and transform the business are created and nurtured

Within this new economy, a key ongoing goal of the CIO is to make sure that IT is aligned with business strategy.

Generally, this IT-to-Business Strategy alignment is achieved in two ways:

Running the business: Providing a cost-effective level of internal services necessary for sustaining business activity.

Building the business: Managing and delivering portfolio development projects that are prioritized and aligned with all key business initiatives aiming to improve efficiency and aid in gaining competitive advantages.

The Nature of the Problem

One challenging pattern we see time and again is the ongoing disconnect between the CIO and the CFO.

Some might say this disconnect is an inevitable result of the fact that technology is moving so fast and we don’t always have the time to stop and assess its value. Understandably, it can be difficult for a CFO to get away from all the checks and balances just to get the financial books closed, let alone turn attention to the books that measure performance at greater depths, like line of business.

In general, as a function of the role, the CFO does not talk servers, desktop deployments, applications or other semantics of the technology business. Conversely, with many companies establishing Technology Shared Service Centers, pressure is placed on the CIO to operate the business of IT with the same financial disciplines the CFO requires of all lines of business. The CIO must connect the value of IT services and capabilities to internal business partners. To achieve this, IT Finance teams require performance management solutions that are IT-specific, yet are connected to Finance, to ensure efficient allocation of resources and effective delivery of internal services.

Part of the CFO’s role is to look at the technology projects and initiatives and think about how all of this technology is adding value. CIOs have to fill information voids, while also having to build their own financial models and performance management book of record using their own resources.

Two seemingly differing views of value can be hard to navigate and leverage. If two divergent approaches are not connected in a common view among the key stakeholders, then—more often than not—there is ongoing value-related confusion. Ultimately, the dissonance between the line of business owners can stall or even paralyze decision-making.

A Better Language Is Needed

For the good of your organization, it’s imperative that the CIO and the CFO speak the same shared language of value and that they connect in an effort to move forward in the most aligned and productive manner possible.

Speaking a shared language—one that offers a unified financial model view and is based on shared definition of value—is a key to finding a solution. The disciplines of ITFM (IT Financial Management) is about equipping both of these executive-level offices and their teams with a better language.

With an ITFM solution, you are able to:

Reduce the time that IT Finance spends on managing the business processes, providing more time for value-added analytical activities

Give IT Managers more detailed, timely, accurate data to better understand the cost & effectiveness of the services and projects they are delivering

Provide Line-of-Business managers with cost transparency into IT allocations and chargebacks, allowing them to better align their consumption of services with their business goals

ITFM focuses on these finance business processes:

IT Planning: Budgeting & forecasting of IT Operating and Capital Spend

IT Costing: Linking supply side financial cost structures with demand side consumption for services and projects

IT Chargebacks: Equitably charging lines of business for internal services and projects performed (or Showback)

IT Finance Organizations typically manage these processes through a series of multiple systems and offline spreadsheets. These processes are not ideal, as they create pain as far as inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in terms of results.

Our preferred solution for IT Service Costing—co-developed with Oracle—is based on PCMCS (Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Service). Oracle’s PCMCS is a cloud-based, packaged performance management application. It offers, in one package, a rules engine for cost allocations, embedded analytics and data management platform.

When developing the solution with PCMCS, the following were top priorities for our team:

That it required no large initial investment

That it was accessible to all

That it was always updated/up-to-date

That limited IT involvement was needed

Oracle IT Financial Management Solution Overview

The ITFM solution, a joint development effort with Oracle and based on valuable feedback and results from multiple Ranzal customer implementations, offers all of the following in one package:

Pre-Packaged Content for Cloud or On-Premise

Pre-Built Data Model

Pre-Built Costing Model & Reporting Content

Pre-Built Interface Specifications

A key component of the PCMCS IT Costing & Chargeback Template is its approach to modeling IT Like a Service Business, which includes the following modules:

Model Financials & Projects: This first step is focused on modeling financial projects, allowing you to combine multiple data sources, perform cost center allocations and, for those customers without an existing project costing system in place, to perform basic project costing and project allocation functions.

Complete Costing of IT Operations: This second pillar of the solution provides a flexible framework that allows you to combine data from multiple sources, perform resource costing and perform service costing.

IT as a Business Service Provider: This third leg of the solution service considers catalogue & bill rates, contribution cost trace, consumer showbacks and consumer chargebacks.

We Have Options, You Have Options

Our Flexible Maturity Model allows customers to start where they feel most comfortable, and progress in a way that is focused on maximum flexibility for maximum effectiveness. No one size fits all, and we believe in starting right where you are.

For more information or to request a demo, email us. Be sure to ask if your company qualifies for our one-day complimentary PCMCS assessment of your IT Service Costing needs.

This post corresponds to the webinar “Full Circle Planning, Cost Management & Profitability in the Manufacturing Industry.” You can access the recording here.

As we are all aware, today’s manufacturing industry faces multiple ongoing challenges, including:

Changing customer/consumer demands

Shrinking operating margins

Ever-changing compliance and regulatory pressures

Increasingly globalizing economy

Lowered availability and visibility of detailed information

Now more than ever, manufacturers’ focus is not just on growth, but, more specifically, on profitable growth.

Managing Profitable Growth

When it comes to profitable growth and insight into profitability, the first place to start is the consolidated P&L.

But while the P&L offers information on profitable growth, it does not help manage profitable growth. The financial P&L provides limited insight into costs, profits and their underlying drivers, from the perspective of their lines of business, products, customers, markets and channels. Cost bases are imperfect and are limited to legacy standard costing and unstructured cost extracts. Results lack a matching of costs and revenue to manage margins at the same strategic view as revenue.

The Need to Focus on Strategic P&Ls

To address and contend with these challenges, we recommend a greater focus on more strategic P&Ls for the manufacturing industry.

A true full-circle planning, costing and reporting solution that aligns and adapts to an integrated financial process includes the following:

Integrated costing capabilities that can allocate indirect expenses to lines of business by leveraging the same actuals, plans and drivers used in the planning process

Robust and real-time reporting to surface strategic P&Ls by Customer, Product and other Lines of Business

Some Solutions are Ineffective and Unsustainable

Our team at Ranzal has seen many manufacturers attempt to piece together a solution using various combinations of spreadsheets, ERP, custom and packaged applications.

Typically, spreadsheets are the most common ingredient given their flexibility and accessibility. But spreadsheets tend to be error-prone, highly manual/labor-intensive and prone also to risk regarding controls and governance. We’ve also seen customizing the ERP as a common solution-oriented approach, but this can be too expensive, overly IT-centric and can also be somewhat of a “black box.” And lastly, custom applications are slow to adapt, can promote high effort and cost and also function like a “black box.”

Oracle’s EPM as the Foundation for Full-Circle Planning

We recommend Oracle EPM’s packaged applications to be the foundation to configuring the right full-circle planning, costing and reporting solution that avoids the constraints and risks other avenues bring on.

The specific Oracle EPM offerings that support a full-circle planning, costing and reporting solution involve:

We believe a comprehensive solution focused on a “Technology Trio” of Integrated Business Analytics, or the convergence of: EPM, BI and BD solutions. Experience and results have shown us that this combination provides the tools and answers needed for improved business performance, increased innovation, better vision, and increased business value.